Master Skylark: A Story of Shakspere's Time by John Bennett (reading list .TXT) 📗
- Author: John Bennett
Book online «Master Skylark: A Story of Shakspere's Time by John Bennett (reading list .TXT) 📗». Author John Bennett
“My soul!” cried Carew, stepping back and snapping his fingers with delight. “Thou art the bravest skylark that ever broke a shell! Fine feathers—fine bird—my soul, how ye do set each other off!” He took Nick by the shoulders, twirled him around, and, standing off again, stared at him like a man who has found two pound sterling in a cast-off coat.
“I can na pay for them, sir,” said Nick, slowly.
“There’s nought to pay—it is a gift.”
Nick hung his head, much troubled. What could he say; what could he think? This man had stolen him from home,—ay, made him tremble for his very life a dozen times,—and with his whole heart he knew he hated him—yet here, a gift!
“Yes, Nick, it is a gift—and all because I love thee, lad.”
“Love me?”
“Why, surely! Who could see thee without liking, or hear thy voice and not love thee? Love thee, Nick? Why, on my word and honour, lad, I love thee with all my heart.”
“Thou hast chosen strange ways to show it, Master Carew,” said Nick, and looked straight up into the master player’s eyes.
Carew turned upon his heel and ordered the dinner.
It was a good dinner: fat roast capon stuffed with spiced carrots; asparagus, biscuit, barley-cakes, and honey; and to end with, a flaky pie, and Spanish cordial sprinkled with burnt sugar. With such fare and a keen appetite, a marvelous brand-new suit of clothes, and Cicely chattering gaily by his side, Nick could not be sulky or doleful long. He was soon laughing; and Carew’s spirits seemed to rise with the boy’s.
“Here, here!” he cried, as Nick was served the third time to the pie; “art hollow to thy very toes? Why, thou’lt eat us out of house and home—hey, Cicely? Marry come up, I think I’d best take Ned Alleyn’s five shillings for thine hire, after all! What! Five shillings? Set me in earth and bowl me to death with boiled turnips!—do they think to play bob-fool with me? Five shillings! A fico for their five shillings—and this for them!” and he squeezed the end of his thumb between his fingers. “Cicely, what dost think?—Phil Henslowe had the face to match Jem Bristow with our Nick!”
“Why, daddy, Jem hath a face like a halibut!”
“And a voice like a husky crow. Why, Nick’s mere shadow on the stage is worth a ton of Jemmy Bristows. ’Twas casting pearls before swine, Nick, to offer thee to Henslowe and Alleyn; but we’ve found a better trough than theirs—hey, Cicely Goldenheart, haven’t we? Thou art to be one of Paul’s boys.”
“Paul who?”
Carew lay back in his chair and laughed. “Paul who? Why, Saint Paul, Nick,—’tis Paul’s Cathedral boys I mean. Marry, what dost say to that?”
“I’d like another barley-cake.”
“You’d what?” cried the master-player, letting the front legs of his chair come down on the floor with a thump.
“I’d like another barley-cake,” said Nick, quietly, helping himself to the honey.
“Upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour!” ejaculated Carew. “Tell a man his fortune’s made, and he calls for barley-cakes! Why, thou’dst say ‘Pooh!’ to a cannon-ball! My faith, boy, dost understand what this doth mean?”
“Ay,” said Nick; “that I be hungry.”
“But, Nick, upon my soul, thou art to sing with the Children of Paul’s; to play with the cathedral company; to be a bright particular star in the sweetest galaxy that ever shone in English sky! Dost take me yet?”
“Ay,” said Nick, and sopped the honey with his cake.
Carew played with his glass uneasily, and tapped his heel upon the floor. “And is that all thou hast to say—hast turned oyster? There’s no R in May—nobody will eat thee! Come, don’t make a mouth as though the honey of the world were all turned gall upon thy tongue. ’Tis the flood-tide of thy fortune, boy! Thou art to sing before the school to-morrow, so that Master Nathaniel Gyles may take thy range and worth. Now, truly, thou wilt do thy very best?”
The bandy-legged man had brought water in a ewer, and poured some in a basin for Nick to wash his hands. There was a green ribbon in his ear, and the towel hung across his arm. Nick wiped his hands in silence.
“Come,” said Master Carew, with an ugly sharpness in his voice, “thou’lt sing thy very best?”
“There’s nothing else to do,” replied Nick, doggedly.
THE SKYLARK’S SONG
Master Nathaniel Gyles, Precentor of St. Paul’s, had pipe-stem legs, and a face like an old parchment put in a box to keep. His sandy hair was thin and straggling, and his fine cloth hose wrinkled around his shrunken shanks; but his eye was sharp, and he wore about his neck a broad gold chain that marked him as no common man.
For Master Nathaniel Gyles was head of the Cathedral schools of acting and of music, and he stood upon his dignity.
“My duty is laid down,” said he, “in most specific terms, sir,—lex cathedralis,—that is to say, by the laws of the cathedral; and has been, sir, since the reign of Richard the Third. Primus Magister Scholarum, Custos Morum, Quartus Custos Rotulorum,—so the title stands, sir; and I know my place.”
He pushed Nick into the anteroom, and turned to Carew with an irritated air.
“I likewise know, sir, what is what. In plain words, Master Gaston Carew, ye have grossly misrepresented this boy to me, to the waste of much good time. Why, sir, he does not dance a step, and cannot act at all.”
“Soft, Master Gyles—be not so fast!” said Carew, haughtily, drawing himself up, with his hand on his poniard; “dost mean to tell me that I have lied to thee? Marry, sir, thy tongue will run thee into a blind alley! I told thee that the boy could sing, but not that he could act or dance.”
“Pouf, sir,—words! I know my place: one peg below the dean, sir, nothing less: ‘Magister, et cetera’—’tis so set down. And I tell thee, sir, he has no training, not a bit; can’t tell a pricksong from a bottle of hay; doesn’t know a canon from a crocodile, or a fugue from a hole in the ground!”
“Oh, fol-de-riddle de fol-de-rol! What has that to do with it? I tell thee, sir, the boy can sing.”
“And, sir, I say I know my place. Music does not grow like weeds.”
“And fa-la-las don’t make a voice.”
“What! How? Wilt thou teach me?” The master’s voice rose angrily. “Teach me, who learned descant and counterpoint in the Gallo-Belgic schools, sir; the best in all the world! Thou, who knowest not a staccato from a stick of liquorice!”
Carew shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “Come, Master Gyles, this is fool play. I told thee that the boy could sing, and thou hast not yet heard him try. Thou knowest right well I am no such simple gull as to mistake a jay for a nightingale; and I tell thee, sir, upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour, he has the voice that thou dost need if thou wouldst win the favor of the Queen. He has the voice, and thou the thingumbobs to make the most of it. Don’t be a fool, now; hear him sing. That’s all I ask. Just hear him once. Thou’lt pawn thine ears to hear him twice.”
The music-school stood within the old cathedral grounds. Through the windows came up distantly the murmur of the throng in Paul’s Yard. It was mid-afternoon, quite warm; blundering flies buzzed up and down the lozenged panes, and through the dark hall crept the humming sound of childish voices reciting eagerly, with now and then a sharp, small cry as some one faltered in his lines and had his fingers rapped. Somewhere else there were boyish voices running scales, now up, now down, without a stop, and other voices singing harmonies, two parts and three together, here and there a little flat from weariness.
The stairs were very dark, Nick thought, as they went up to another floor; but the long hall they came into there was quite bright with the sun.
At one end was a little stage, like the one at the Rose play-house, with a small gallery for musicians above it; but everything here was painted white and gold, and was most scrupulously clean. The rush-strewn floor was filled with oaken benches, and there were paintings hanging upon the wall, portraits of old head-masters and precentors. Some of them were so dark with time that Nick wondered if they had been blackamoors.
Master Gyles closed the great door and pulled a cord that hung by the stage. A bell jangled faintly somewhere in the wall. Nick heard the muffled voices hush, and then a shuffling tramp of slippered feet came up the outer stair.
“Pouf!” said the precentor, crustily. “Tempus fugit—that is to say, we have no time to waste. So, marry, boy, venite, exultemus—in other words, if thou canst sing, be up and at it. Come, cantate—sing, I bid thee, and that instanter—if thou canst sing at all.”
The under-masters and monitors were pushing the boys into their seats. Carew pointed to the stage. “Thou’lt do thy level best!” he said in a low, hard tone, and something clashed beneath his cloak like steel on steel.
Nick went up the steps behind the screen. It seemed cold in the room; he had not noticed it before. Yet there were sweat-drops upon his forehead. He felt as if he were a jackanapes he had seen once at the Stratford fair, which wore a crimson jerkin and a cap. The man who had the jackanapes played upon a pipe and a tabor; and when he said, “Dance!” the jackanapes danced, for it was sorely afraid of the man. Yet when Nick looked around and did not see the master-player anywhere in the hall, he felt exceedingly lonely all at once without him, though he both feared and hated him.
There still was a shuffling of feet and a low talking; but soon it became very quiet, and they all seemed to be waiting for him to begin. He did not care, but supposed he might as well: what else could he do?
There was a clock somewhere ticking quickly with its sharp, metallic ring. As he listened, lonely, his heart cried out for home. In his fancy the wind seemed rippling over the Avon, and the elm-leaves rustled like rain upon the roof above his bed. There were red and white wild-roses in the hedge, and in the air a smell of clover and of new-mown hay. The mowers would be working in the clover in the moonlight. He could almost see the sweep of the shining scythes, and hear the chink-a-chank, chink-a-chank of the whetstone on the long, curving blades. Chink-a-chank, chink-a-chank—’twas but the clock, and he in London town.
Carew, sitting there behind the carven prompter’s-screen, put down his head between his hands and listened. There were murmurings a little while, then silence. Would the boy never begin? He pressed his knuckles into his temples and waited. Bow Bells rang out the hour; but the room was as still as a deep sleep. Would the boy never begin?
The precentor sniffed. It was a contemptuous, incredulous sniff. Carew looked up—his lips white, a fierce red spot in each cheek. He was talking to himself. “By the whistle of the Lord High Admiral!” he said—but there he stopped and held his breath. Nick was singing.
Only the old madrigal, with its half-forgotten words that other generations sang before they fell asleep. How queer it sounded there! It was a very simple tune, too; yet, as he sang, the old precentor started from his chair and pressed his wrinkled hands together against his breast. He quite forgot the sneer upon his face, and it went fading out like breath from a frosty pane.
He had twelve boys who could sing a hundred songs at sight from unfamiliar notes; who kept the beat and marked the time as if their throats were pendulums; could syncopate and floriate as readily as breathe. And this was only a common country song.
But—“That voice, that voice!” he panted to himself: for old Nat Gyles was music-mad; melody to him was
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